


safe in my arms

by magisterequitum



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Selina Lauren Snow causes her parents trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	safe in my arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! 
> 
> I was very excited to work on this assignment and had a lot of fun doing so. I went through your letter and really tried here to give you not just a huge amount of insight in Sienna, but also her interactions with everyone in her life and how her future might progress. I wanted to focus a lot on her, but fit in others too. I tried also to weave in a lot of your likes. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it.

[1]

 

Sienna does not get pregnant till a few months after her twenty-seventh birthday. 

Truly they don’t even think about it till after she’s twenty-four, after the war has rocked the three races, shaken the world and settled it back down to sort itself out. Then, she had been young and not-young; a child, never given the luxury of being anything but a soldier, competing against the woman who selfishly wanted everything because she could have it. 

But things had settled and the Pack had become so much more than war and blood, and she with it. By twenty-five they’d wanted it for good, no longer a shared dream they occasionally thought on and voiced aloud. Certain that the world was safer and there was no threat from anyone, even themselves, they had made the choice together. A discrete trip to Lara and a trusted, well-checked out specialist, and the attempts of trying had been rewarding and fun.

Now, Sienna curves her hand around her stomach as she settles on the workbench. Three months in, her belly isn’t noticeable to anyone who doesn’t look close. Partially because she’s had it hard eating well and the other due to the fact that she wears Hawke’s sweatshirts now more than anything else. She finds his scent soothing when her stomach rolls, a well placed anchor. She sweeps her braid off her shoulder and leans back against the den’s rock wall. It’s quiet here. She’d been prepared to spend her free morning with Evie, but her friend had a shift she’d taken over for another. 

“Are you well?” 

Sienna blinks tired lids and feels her mouth form a sheepish smile at being caught. “I can’t hide it, can I?” 

Walker puts the piece of sandpaper on the table and stares at her. The skin around the corner of his green eyes crinkles as he assesses her in the low-light of his workshop. The look he gives her she could term sardonic if she would ever say that Walker Lauren gave out sardonic expressions. “Children are not a new experience to me.” 

Her mouth tilts in a smile, her fingers dragging across the sweatshirt’s fabric. The truth. Her Uncle had always worked with children, his own and others, herself and Toby included. “Sometimes I forget.” 

The _look_ twists. “You are not a very good liar, either.” 

She shrugs. “You’ve all beaten me out of that.” 

Her Uncle discards the materials he’d been shaping into something. There are tiny pieces of wood and copper, a paintbrush tipped to the side. He leaves it behind to step towards her, a hand reaching out to touch her knee. Nearly a decade ago, she could have counted how many times he’d willingly touched her. Now, a hand on her legging clothed leg is natural. It’s the women who have shaped him differently; all three, Lara, Marlee, and little Kristina. 

“Is it your stomach?” He asks, green eyes already narrowing in contemplation. 

Sienna nods and huffs, foot swinging out and then back in, her heel thumping against the wall under the bench. “I was doing better. Really. And then this morning it all went down hill,” she frowns. “Or well, up.” 

Walker makes a noise from the back of his throat, patting at her knee. “It’s not a competition, Sienna.” 

She flushes under his gaze, feels her face heat despite the fact that now she holds a significantly high place of importance in the Pack, that only Walker can ever make her still feel a child at times. “I don’t like to bother anyone.” 

She doesn’t say too that she’s afraid that something could go wrong. They’d spent so long not thinking about it because they weren’t ready, and then the gene therapy and selecting to carefully ensure her X trait wasn’t passed on, and that had been painful enough. She does not want to admit that still she dreams at times that she will lose the baby inside her. That her body could betray her again. Those are things she only tells Hawke, and only then in the dark and silence of their quarters. 

He must know though, Walker, because he pats her again and tells her to wait here. 

Alone, Sienna palms her rounded stomach. Lara had told her it could still be some time before they feel anything or even know if they were to have a girl or a boy; something Hawke had maintained he didn’t want to plan for, only the X-gene. “You should behave,” she says aloud in the workshop. “You’ve made me lose chocolate already.” 

She can’t eat the sweet anymore. The smell of it alone is enough to create a reaction. A lamented loss that Drew liked to tease her about before Hawke had told him to leave her be. 

There’s no animosity in her words though, just a gentle grumble, and she turns her gaze to the workbench next to her. She’s reaching over to touch a bent and folded piece of copper when Walker returns. 

He presses a mug into her hand, tapping her knuckles for attention. “Drink.” 

She takes a sip and recognizes the familiar citrus taste immediately. Lara had recommended the tea for her, telling her it would help settle her nausea, and the den had restructured itself to always have a supply and ready access if needed. She should not have been surprised, given that the room they’d converted as a nursery already had far too many gifts in it from everyone in the den and the surrounding areas, but the kindness still meant something. 

“This is a wolf,” Sienna says, touching what she can make out as a tail. It’s incomplete, whatever he’s working on, but she can tell that much. 

“Drink more,” Walker chastises her and pushes the incomplete wolf away from her curious sight and fingers. “I won’t have your mate mad at me later.” 

She frowns at being denied her curiosity and then at the reminder at how overprotective her mate had become. Nesting, Brenna had told her, only it seemed that Hawke had gotten it instead of Sienna. They had never slept with a comforter on their bed, but now for the past three months Sienna had been cocooned in no less than three blankets each night. Not to mention the fact that the den’s stores had been completely reorganized one day. And the no less than five books on pregnancy and children that he’d taken from Lucas. Their cabin was even more prepared and decorated. “He worries enough.” 

“Yes I do.” 

Sienna leans into the hand that cups the back of her neck, breathing in his familiar scent. He’d not wanted to leave her this morning, but she’d told him no way would she let him skip out on a business meeting to follow her around and make sure she didn’t break a nail or something. “I didn’t hear you come in,” her brow creases. “I didn’t feel you either.” She does now, their bond warm and twining around her in a comforting hug. 

“I’m quiet like that,” Hawke says, kissing the side of her temple. “The baby must be blocking the bond again.” 

Sienna made a note to call Sascha later and ask if she’d had anything similar during her pregnancies or knew of anything. Though she could not feel the baby moving, she could feel another psychic mind that frequently butted against her own as if to wrap her around it. 

“Drink all of that,” Walker tells her, helping her down from the bench and turning her away from his work. 

“She will,” Hawke says, twisting away when she pinches him for that comment. “Hey, now.” 

“I’m fully capable of taking care of myself.” Sienna turns over her shoulder at the door to eye her uncle. “Don’t think I don’t realize you want me away from here.” He hadn’t turned her away outright when she’d showed up, but he’s quick to divert her attention elsewhere now that he can. 

Hawke leads her from the room into the hallway when Walker’s mouth only twitches in what could be a smug smile; that is if she’s also the person to admit that Walker Lauren smirked. “You should leave him be.” 

“Why?” she asks, letting him turn them towards their quarters. No longer in the same place as when they’d first mated and moved in together, now they were further inside and more secluded, with a larger set of rooms. Family rooms. “He’s up to something. You know I hate surprises.” 

He smiles at her, wolf sharp and eyes too blue. “It’s a gift,” he tells her with a conspiratorially air. 

They pass Riaz who asks her how she is. “Better,” she answers, holding the tea mug in her hand. “Thank you.” Lara’s tea recommendation does truly work. She has a meeting with the other wolf later to discuss the business reports for the quarter. 

When they’re alone again she turns to find Hawke watching her with a worried look. “I’m fine. Another gift? Don’t we have enough? And there’s still six more months to go.” She can still remember how on a shift with the younger children in the den, they'd all crowded around her and given her a hand crafted gift with a chorus of "for Sinna" calls.

His frown lifts for a moment. “Baby, people are happy. They like giving us things. They like children.” 

She doesn’t interject to tell him that half of their “gifts” he’d solicited or bought himself. Their unborn child already has a hoard of stuffed animals. Her favorite, though she will not tell anyone in the den, is the little cub that Lucas had given to her personally. It is still hard at times for her to understand, old Psy foundations and that life creeping back over her. 

He leads her into their quarters, shutting the door behind, and following her to their room. He touches her stomach, large palm spreading out over the baby’s swell. “You’re sick again?” 

Sienna lifts her hand and smoothes her fingers across the nape of his neck, a sweeping gesture to relax his stiff muscles. “Just this morning.” 

Hawke nips her chin for that and then kisses her. His mouth pulls her lower lip between his own, and she stretches on her toes to sink further into him, holding the tea mug away so as not to spill in her other hand. He reaches for the cup and sets it down on a nightstand. 

“This is a better hello,” she says and kisses him again, free to tunnel her hands through his hair now that she has both available. 

“You’re distracting me,” he bites her lower lip and peers down at her, touching her cheek briefly. “You’re cold.” 

She is a little, but there’s no use in telling him that it has more to do with it being winter than it being the baby. Instead she closes the tiny gap between them till her breasts press against his chest. “You could warm me up.” 

“Very distracting, Baby. My sneaky Psy.” His eyes roll with the blue shade of the wolf, a tell only she is good at picking up. 

He does warm her up. Bundles her to the bed and kisses her all over. He also tucks the blanket over her after and makes her finish her tea with the threat of telling Lara after if she doesn’t. 

 

 

[2]

 

Their daughter does not have a name. 

It’s been four days since Sienna went into labor, and though the process had gone relatively smooth and on average in amount of time with others who gave birth, she finds fatigue lingering in her. She is not used to her body being tired in this way. The psychic plane she’d exhausted herself on before, but not her body. Not since she’d been a novice soldier years ago. 

As such, she’s tucked under a soft quilt Marlee had picked for her with Brenna’s help, sitting on the chaise seat in the nursery room. Hawke and she had set up this room together, from the soft yellow paint on the walls to the mahogany crib; over it hangs the completed mobile from Walker, little copper wolf shiny and bright. Their daughter would sleep with them for several days yet, neither one of them wanting to take their eyes off her. 

But the room is ready for then. 

Sienna watches as Hawke paces carefully in slow circles. He too has a tired face. His hair sticks up in tuffs and lines bracket his mouth. He cradles their daughter’s small head in one large palm, and his sharp blue gaze never strays from her sleeping features; she’d only sleep for another half hour, Sienna’s certain. 

The sight of them, her family, _hers_ , moves exhausted muscles to smile. 

The past four days have been full of joyous celebration. Toby had come back from school to be in the den, and Marlee had crowded Sienna’s bedside as soon as she could. Walker and Judd had only left to sleep when they were both certain she would be okay. Then, the rest of the den had wanted to extend their congratulations. Indigo and Evie, the older of the Riviere sisters kissing Sienna’s gross forehead and Evie bringing her clean clothes and braiding her hair again. Riley had tried to steal their newborn baby from Hawke’s arms and received a growl in response. DarkRiver had not visited yet, but she knows they will. So many and while she has no empathic abilities, even she has felt the love from everyone. 

Now it’s just them and Sienna stretches her back against the chair’s suede covering. “We should name her,” she calls out softly. 

Hawke’s feet keep moving, but he nods towards her. 

They’d tried to pick a name out after her first trimester had passed. But both had been too wary of something happening, of not picking the right one, of too much not being sure. Others in the den had tittered about it, expressing the problem of not being able to celebrate without a name. They’d never settled on anything.

He looks up at her, eyes luminescent in the turned down lights of the room. “Do you want to name her after your mother?” his voice is just as quiet as hers had been, a soft whisper. 

Sienna shakes her head. “Krissy is named after her. Walker asked me and I told him I didn’t mind.” And truly she hadn’t when her Uncle had come to her and asked if Sienna or Toby had objections. Little Kristina had been named with both their blessings. 

She pulls the quilt down to free her hands and arms. “Come here.” 

The chaise they’d picked is big enough for two to sit on. The lounger can hold them both, but Hawke folds himself to sit in front of her bent legs. He passes their sleeping daughter into her open arms, smoothing out the wrinkles that appear on her forehead from the movement. 

Eyes closed, Sienna knows that if they were to open they’d match the ones looking at her now. “Do you want to name her after yours?” 

There are ghosts that crowd the room other than the three living occupants in it. 

Hawke nestles his head against hers to kiss the shell of her ear. “I think we’ve had enough of the past.” 

Some part of her unclenches, the air in her lungs lessening so she can breathe easier. There’s so much she’s worried at getting right, that they’d worried about, but things feel less now. She turns her head so she can kiss him on his mouth. 

She turns her gaze back to the tiny sleeping face, touching little fingers that curl around just one of hers. And then it comes to her as Hawke smooths out a white-blue corner of the quilt. 

“Selina,” she says, sounding the syllables on her tongue. 

A huff of laughter hits her neck. “Is this a joke of yours?”

Sienna arches her neck and eyebrows, white stars in her eyes bleeding to flashes of gold and red, reflective in his own blue irises. She sniffs. “Well you do howl a lot.” 

“Baby, you’re just as much wolf as me. And when have you ever caught me howling to the moon?” His fingers tickle her side, making her jump. 

“Riley’s told me stories.” 

“We were drunk.” 

She smiles. “So you say.” 

Hawke laughs again and then looks down to their daughter. He touches her forehead and smiles. “Selina Lauren Snow then.” 

 

 

[3]

 

Changeling children normally do not shift till after the age of one. It is a trust and instinctual issue, the act of shifting, and for children with constantly developing minds, instinct cannot rule what the body and mind don’t know or accept. One or after, when children can walk and communicate and show wants, that is when it happens. Some earlier, some a bit after, but normal to be around there. 

Selina still has not. 

The days grow further apart from the celebration months ago, and still her daughter has not shifted to share the form of her father. 

Sienna knows that changeling-Psy children have the ability to do so. Lara had explained it, and she has cuddled her Uncles’ children both, as well as little Naya in her panther form. She’s been told not to worry. 

“Sometimes it happens later,” Lara had said when she’d caught Sienna with a heavy brow as Selina patted Kristina’s soft tan fur. 

Sienna had stroked her daughter’s red hair, slipping fingers over the slightly curled ends. Growing longer each day and would need a trim soon. “But she should have already.” 

Lara had been unable to keep the frown that pulled her smile down for a few seconds. “It’s rarer, but,” she’d grasped Sienna’s wrist in a comforting squeeze. “It still happens.” 

“She’ll shift when she’s ready,” Hawke tells her when she voices the worry aloud in the privacy of their cabin while Selina naps. They cannot move from the den with their responsibilities as leaders, but the cabin remains theirs forever. They use it frequently still. 

She makes sure to keep her voice even, the bond between them steady and sure. She does not often manipulate her emotions through the mating bond these days, something she’d accidentally done soon after their mating out of reflexive fear at losing everything, but sometimes still she could call upon the ability. Such as when she feared that their daughter may not share a part of her father. 

During the genetic therapy, they’d touched nothing else other than Sienna’s X-gene marker. Regardless, the anxiety that she had done something, or that their genes had mixed in a way to cause this, naggled at her thoughts. 

Sienna does not dare ask Ashaya, knowing the scientist would want to look at Selina’s genetic code. That she will never give or allow. Once Ming had held Sienna’s own, as if she was his patented property. She would never allow that, too precious their daughter’s essence to her. Reinforced by the fury of the cold fire inside of her. 

She knows too that Dorian himself had been born with a tampered gene. She knows what others do not want to tell her: that sometimes it happens.

So she keeps her voice even when talking about it with Hawke after Selina’s one year celebration had passed and grown fainter. It’s not fear that Hawke will love Selina or her any less, but that Sienna wants so much for him to be a part of her as much as the blue eyes that had never changed to anything less than the brilliant matching shade of her mate’s. 

He repeats his statement, tells her she’s silly, and that their daughter takes after her mother in wanting to be a trouble maker. 

Still, Sienna feels the way his mouth holds tension when he kisses her forehead, thumbs shakily sweeping over her cheekbones. 

“Evie didn’t change till after she was two,” Indigo had told her weeks ago when Sienna had confided in her. The lieutenant had stolen Selina during a meeting, bouncing her on her jean clad knee. She’d stayed after to talk with her. Her mentor’s eyes had been namesake bright and smile wide as her movements drew giggles from Selina. 

“Because she was sick?” Sienna had asked in reply, already knowing the answer. 

Fixing her with a look, Indigo had stated, just as blunt as Sienna’s question had been offered, “But look at her now.” 

Evie who still helps her pick clothes from her closet and teases her about candy apples. Evie her dearest friend, who has become the first person Hawke seeks out when Sienna is upset. Evie who is brilliant in her new role of teaching the submissive youth and champion for them in the den. 

And so it is weeks later when Sienna is busy going over reports for the InterRacial Council, tedious things she will gripe to Hawke about later over their lunch date and why she ever agreed to be on it, that her head snaps up when a howl sounds throughout the den. Joy floods the bond that beats inside her alongside her heart. That howl is familiar to her, known by everyone in the Pack. The noise dies and then is chorused, echoed and joined till the walls of the alpha’s office shake and the white stars leave Sienna’s eyes. 

It’s not worry that drives her to her feet and sees her running out into the hallways, but a curiousity and anxiety that must be satiated. 

Easy to follow along her heart’s pull until she’s in the White Zone, packmates moving out of her way. They all smile at her, and the atmosphere thrums with energy. 

“What?” the question dies on her tongue though because then she can _see_. 

Brilliant familiar silver white fur that she’s rubbed her hands through and held in her arms for nearly a decade now. But there at Hawke’s feet, a smaller body with downy brown-gray fur and tiny paws bat at her father’s muzzle. 

“Congratulations, sweetheart.” A kiss from Walker on her cheek and Judd squeezing her hand. 

She has eyes only for her mate and daughter though, and only barely registers the other den members and their cheerful words, only vaguely will she remember Riley hugging her shoulders and then ushering everyone else away, because Selina is yipping in her direction and toddling on shaky four legs. 

Sienna drops to her knees in the White Zone and holds fur of white and pup brown-gray. Her heart has never been so full, she thinks, and it bottoms her out for a moment. Flashes from her life before rising up. She shakes them away though, laughing as Selina bites her fingers. 

Later, in their quarters with her back to Hawke’s chest and Selina still shifted and chewing on her braid, Hawke says, “See, just wanted to be like her mother.” His voice is full of warmth and his eyes glow. 

She elbows him lightly in the side. 

 

 

[4]

 

Sienna is meeting with Nell about the maternal dominants and the other woman stepping aside in some of her duties when the warning goes off in her head. 

Psy parents often kept a feedback loop to young children, guiding their telepathy and growing psychic abilities, and part of it provided a way to know when something happened. 

As it is, Sienna had maintained the telepathic link with Selina even after her daughter had turned four. The ping flares bright and hot on the psychic plane, and Sienna draws in a sharp breath. 

“Are you alright?” Nell asks, forehead pinching together and worry changing her gaze where just a minute ago they’d been talking candidates to help her job. 

“Selina needs me. Something’s scared her. I have to go, can we finish this later?” Sienna asks as she already reaches out for her daughter’s mind. Reassurance and to whisper that she’s coming. 

Nell waves her off, asking if she can do anything. 

Sienna tells her to call Hawke and then leaves, hurrying to where Selina is. Her daughter’s telepathic abilities are quiet as she hurries through the corridors. She thinks this must have been what Hawke had felt like years ago when she’d shut down on herself. It’s disconcerting, this blankness, where usually Selina is always wrapped around Sienna’s mind, stealing her close and gravitating her towards her. 

Her mind has made up no less than five scenarios by the time she makes it to the White Zone. 

She finds Marlee crouched on the ground, on duty here for today, and doesn’t even need to speak before Marlee is rising to her feet, one hand still holding Selina. “It’s alright, Sienna. She’s okay.” 

“What happened?” Sienna asks, staring between Marlee and her daughter’s downward bent head. Selina is never this quiet, not even in her sleep. 

Marlee blinks green eyes, mouth twisting, and then says, “I think Selina’s psychic abilities kicked in today.” 

Following in her lateness in shifting, Selina had displayed no outward manifestation of any Psy abilities beyond the basic telepathy that most Psy had. Not uncommon at all for Psy children to show late or not at all, given that Sienna’s X-ability had not manifested till later. Judd and Walker had told her that Selina could simply just be a telepath, but that with the Lauren family genetics could later have something develop. 

Sienna kneels down to carefully touch Selina’s head, getting a jerked reaction and wet blue eyes in response. She makes a soothing noise, reaching for her daughter. “It’s okay, honey. I’m not mad. It’s okay.” 

“I think it scared her more than anything.” Marlee says from over them. 

“What happened?” Sienna asks again, hoping that Marlee will say or Selina will speak. 

_’Selina’_ she says telepathically, reaching out that way. Sensation floods the link and then tiny arms clasp tight around her neck as her daughter buries her head in Sienna’s neck. 

Marlee hesitates and after a moment speaks again. “I think we should get Toby.” 

Fifteen minutes later they’re sitting in the living room of their quarters, Selina still in Sienna’s arms, having refused to even go to Hawke’s arms. Hawke who now stands behind her, over the back of the couch, and keeps a hand on Sienna’s shoulder. 

Marlee twists her hands across from them, Toby next to her and Judd on her other side. “I don’t think she meant it to happen. See, they were all playing. You know how they play with some as wolves and some still in human form, and ‘Lena wasn’t doing so well in the game. Next thing everyone is trying to give her the ball, fighting over it.” 

“I don’t understand,” Hawke says from above Sienna’s head.

Marlee shakes her head. “It was like a switch. Everyone stopped,” she hesitates for a second. “I’ve never seen anything like it, but she made them do it. I’m certain of it. Next thing she’s screaming and goes quiet and doesn’t want anyone touching her.” 

“She shut down telepathically too,” Sienna confirms. She smoothes a hand over ruby red hair that’s tangled and knotted, smoothing it over and over again back from her forehead. And then she tries a trick that's always fascinated Selina. She calls along the link for her to watch and then unfurls a hand, bringing forth the cold fire to dance across her palm. She'd learned to manipulate it years ago, could make it burn or not, and at times she played with Selina by putting it in her daughter's hand. Now, she keeps it in her own, but it does what she wants. 

Selina pulls her head back to watch the blue fire play across Sienna's palm. 

“She never displayed any telekinetic abilities,” Judd interrupts from the opposite couch. “But I did say that the family genes would likely make her strong in something. It’s possible her mixed genes have morphed into something else.” 

“Like Sascha and Lucas’s children.” 

Judd nods. “Like the Shine children too.” 

“Can I look?” Toby asks, speaking for the first time, his cardinal gaze studying Sienna and Selina. 

Sienna’s fingers of her free hand tighten for a moment on her daughter’s back, but then Hawke squeezes her shoulder and they share a look. “If she’s okay with it,” she finally says. 

Her brother nods and then shifts to kneel on the floor beside their seated forms. “‘Lena,” he starts softly, keeping his hands by his head. “Can I talk with you?” 

He doesn’t need his hands and he doesn’t need his voice. Toby’s empathic and telepathic abilities had combined to make him the best person to speak to someone on the psychic plain in the den. Sascha had taught him well, and he’s the first one that Little Krissy or Judd and Brenna’s Declan turn to when troubled beyond their parents. 

Selina peeks a look away from the cold fire, blue eyes assessing. Finally, she nods. 

The stars leave Toby’s eyes and even Selina’s go dark black, the power being used all telepathically. 

Sienna kills the fire, but returns to running her fingers through the messy red locks. Above her, Hawke shifts his hand to touch her own hair, smoothing the length of her braid from scalp to end. 

After several minutes, Toby leans back, blinking slow and then opening eyes to reveal rainbow colored sparks in the cardinal depths. He smiles and kisses Selina on the cheek. “See it’s okay.” He doesn’t leave the floor, choosing to rearrange and sit cross legged. “She’s a telepath. But you know how empathy works by feeling others around you? She’s not empathic, but her telepathy works in reverse too. I watched how she did it. She draws people to her, probably lowers their defenses. Like Uncle Judd said, the mixed genes have mutated to something else too.” 

Hawke’s hand stills. “That’s why when you were pregnant the bond was always blocked at times. You couldn’t feel me because she was drawing your attention all to her.” 

Sienna expels a withheld breath. A telepath could be dangerous enough, and her mother’s memory lingers still, a warning. 

Judd, as if sensing her thoughts, turns to her. “She can be taught, Sienna. You can teach her.” 

“I’m sorry, Mama.” Selina’s tiny voice breaks her thought’s hold. 

“No,” she says and kisses her forehead and cheeks, smiling and tickling her side. “Never be sorry. You’re perfect.” 

Later, Sascha confirms it herself when they visit the other alpha pair for dinner. 

“She’ll be wonderful,” Sascha says and hands Sienna a slice of pie that tastes only a little bit of salt. 

“I can’t wait till she gets older and everyone wants her. She’ll have people lined up to give her courting gifts,” Lucas calls from outside on the porch where Hawke and he have taken up to play cards. Sienna had been banned after counting numbers and fleecing them too many times. 

“Shut the hell up, Hunter,” Hawke’s snarl is immediate. 

“Watch your mouth, wolf.” 

Several thumps follow and cards and worries are forgotten. 

 

 

[5]

 

“She did what?”

Sienna is certain she hasn’t heard Hawke right. Her ears must be full or else she’s more tired from her work on her study of relationship bonds, both changeling and Psy, than she’d thought. 

But no, Hawke grins at her and points to the two seated figures in front of his office desk. Instantly she focuses on the ruby shine of hair she’d tied back before leaving this morning. Selina’s familiar telepathy, that twining ease that always floated freely around her and still so unfamiliar to them, butts against Sienna’s own psychic mind. A little thrill at her mother being so close. 

She stays in the doorway though, knowing that Selina’s done something else now that’s warranted some sort of discipline. Still wondering at the too wide grin on Hawke’s face she can see from the corner of her eye, she shifts her gaze. 

The sight causes her mouth to part, shock mixing with Hawke’s amusement across the bond. 

“She didn’t,” she says. 

“She did.” 

‘Where did she even find scissors?”

“Auntie Brenna had them and that’s what I was more concerned about.”

Sienna eyes the now unevenly cut hair of Riley and Mercy’s oldest son. By the tufted spikes she thinks it’s supposed to be a mohawk. Probably to resemble Kenji who had visited the den last week. “And he let her?”

The boy is eight years older than Selina, who while at five is precocious and already displaying warning signs that she’d follow completely after Hawke’s dominance, shouldn’t have been able to enact this. But then, Selina does as she wishes, outpacing the Kincaid brood in leaps. 

“Oh yeah. Declan helped apparently.” Hawke says and the calls out to the boy, “Liam, you like it don’t you?”

The preteen gives them a gap toothed grin, turning around to look over the back of the chair. He nods his head up and down. “‘Lena did it. It’s good.” 

Hawke cups her hip with one large hand and says quieter against her ear. “Wait till I tell Riley.” 

Sienna quirks her eyebrow at him, her turn for a slow grin. “I’ll leave that to you.”


End file.
